Hallo All Please find below Carlos' input for work stream 4. Are there any comments to the observations made by Carlos? Regards Fiona Asonga ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: "Carlos Raúl Gutierrez" <carlosraulg@gmail.com> To: "Lise Fuhr" <lise.fuhr@difo.dk>, "Fiona Asonga" <fasonga@kixp.or.ke> Sent: Thursday, May 9, 2013 1:58:38 AM Subject: Re: [atrt2] La Icann abrirá en Montevideo su segundo centro regional a escala global Dear Fiona, our dear e-Lise seems to be suggesting that we don't work enough to deserve Lobster. So let me send you my thoughts on work stream 4, even if it is only a preliminary draft, base on Boston Consulting Groups "Independent Review of the Board of ICANN (Main Report) of November 2008 I would also like to quote some specific paragraphs of the Report in particular as per hereunder: Boston Consulting Group on ICANN Clarifying the accountability of the board: ICANN’s structure is complex and the roles and accountabilities are not always clear. Certainly, there are divergent views in the ICANN community around accountabilities and, while much of this discussion extends beyond the scope of this project, some steps to clarify and better align divergent opinions will be important. Define annually the five most significant issues facing ICANN and build extensive regular discussion of these issues into the board meeting agenda. Recommendation #8: Clarify the board’s accountabilities. Initiate a program of discussions that explore the following propositions: (a) Agree the accountability of ICANN’s board – to ICANN itself, the ICANN community and/or the Internet? (b) Affirm that ICANN directors owe their loyalty to the board and not to their sponsoring organisations. (c) Support proposals for a process to dismiss the board but ensure that the hurdle is quite high. (d) Discuss possible conflict issues in the board's role overseeing the ICANN community where its members are appointed by those who are doing the work. Agree that a key role of the independent directors (via NomCom) is to ensure that the board continues to carries out its role without compromise. (e) Discuss the future work division between paid staff and volunteers and form a view as to what this will look like in five years time. (f) Consider the proposition that the stakeholder groups get together to appoint a board acceptable to all of them – rather than directly appointing their own representatives to the board. ICANN is formally a non-member organisation. In practice however, because ICANN exercises control over important aspects of the internet, the ICANN board needs to be responsive to a very wide range of different stakeholders all with a legitimate interest in influencing ICANN decisions. The organisation is unusual in that its legitimacy, (and that of the board), derives less from its legal basis and more from the collective acceptance and support of the ICANN ‘community’. As such, the ICANN board needs in practice to be responsive to a wide and diverse range of stakeholders. These characteristics surely have an impact on the structure and decision-making of the board. Representation and election rules reflect ICANN’s bottom up principles and support its continued legitimacy as a policy maker. But to whom is the board really accountable? RE: "PARLIAMENT Conditions of the policy making process "? ICANNs governance model is very different to that of public companies. In contrast to conventional public company governance models, ICANN seeks to protect stakeholders and the ‘public trust’ by giving all interested parties, including vested interests, a voice at the policy-making table – and then ensuring that no sectional interest can ‘capture’ the policy making process. Clarify the accountability of the board: In the corporate world, the accountabilities of a board and the constituencies to which the board is accountable are quite clear. But ICANN’s bottom-up and distributed power bases are creating special challenges when aligning accountability and responsibility. Lack of agreement or confusion impedes organisation effectiveness and clarification will bring benefits. In some respects this is due to there being so many layers of accountability. And so it is not a surprise to find that clarity of accountability is an issue. ICANN has neither a full owner nor a membership community with rights but nonetheless is engaged in an activity for which legitimacy is hugely important. RE: To my question on the role of the Board: (Issue #4) Is it really a board? Some don’t really see the ICANN board as a real board. Rather, they see it as a purely representative body overseeing the world of ICANN’s interests. The consultants make two interesting comments : Is the governance structure 'conflicted'? The fourth issue raised involves role confusion – between those who do the work and those who are supposed to oversee that work. Much of the ICANN community’s policy development work is actually done by volunteers in the Supporting Organisations and so the ‘governance’ issue is this: How can proper accountability be exercised when these same organisations place their own nominees on the ICANN board? It mixes the ‘gamekeeper and poacher’ roles. The independence of board members is compromised. Does the policy development process work well? Our second comment is directed more to where the work will be done in future. There seems to be a view that the role of the ICANN paid staff is to service and support the volunteers who will do the actual policy work. We can see where this view started – it was a noble ideal to rely on volunteers and also realistic given that ICANN had no staff. But is it the future? We doubt it. In a world of increasing speed and complexity (in part caused by the Internet!) this structure could prove unsustainable. Increasingly, the ICANN staff will do the actual (policy development We might take it from here tomorrow after the conference call CHEERS!!!!! Carlos Raúl Gutierrez -- crg@isoc-cr.org Skype carlos.raulg +506 7070 7176 El 08/05/2013, a las 11:28, "Lise Fuhr" < lise.fuhr@difo.dk > escribió: Sí sí señor J See you in Durban – and you and Fiona promised to do some homework on work-stream 4 description. Best, Lise Fra: Carlos Raul [mailto:carlosraulg@ gmail.com ] Sendt: 8. maj 2013 19:22 Til: Lise Fuhr Emne: Re: SV: [atrt2] La Icann abrirá en Montevideo su segundo centro regional a escala global Arriba Aruba ;)